A blog following the life and times of Elder Chris Paxton, called to serve in the Idaho Boise Spanish Speaking Mission.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

What a Week!

Mom, I hope that everything goes well with your surgery. I am sure you are super excited to have surgery and I also imagine that you cant wait to go through the recovery, being all the pains of healing and the limited mobility for a while.

That is sad to hear about your contractor passing away. We have also had a similar experience happen here. Elder Padgett had been teaching this family before I got here and they had gotten a little turned off to the gospel, and so I have only met the mom at the door a couple of times, but have never taught them. About a week ago we got a call from their neighbors/fellowshippers, and they told us that their son had taken his life as well. The family is good friends with a bishop and he has been over a couple of times. Our first thought was that the gospel is exactly what they need in their lives right now, but we want to be sensitive to the matter and not come off as "taking advantage" of this and using it to baptize them. We have talked with the Bishop and he told us that maybe if we go by in about a week that might be really good for them. The day it happened the Bishop went by and committed them to coming to church, which they did, and the talks in sacrament meeting were all focused on Christ, their followshippers said that they really benefited from the messages. We will see how things go there and what help we can be.

Enough of sad things let's focus on the great miracles that happened this last week. We now have two investigators that have expressed a desire to be baptized. Both actually came from a less active member that we met a couple of weeks ago. The first time that we actually had a lesson with Maria Gutierrez, her non member son, Marco, was there and we talked with him a little bit and he expressed interests in learning more, so we set a return appointment. We weren't able to visit with him until yesterday and he told us that even though he has a basic understanding of the church he wants to start from the beginning and work towards baptism. We probably would have set a date but he got a call and had to leave to meet with someone, so our lesson got cut short. We are going to try to visit him on Saturday and then see him at church on Sunday and probably have another lesson with him on Monday.

The other investigator that came from Maria is her brother in law. The way we met him was by looking for Maria and Marco was there as well looking for her, but she wasn't there. He said that she would probably be at his aunt's house, so we followed him there, found Maria, and met her sister Amparo. Amparo is also a less active member and her husband Angel is not a member. When we went back, we taught the first lesson and gave him a Book of Mormon, and he told us that he would come to church. He wasn't able to make it because he was helping someone change houses, and Sunday was the only day that they could borrow the truck to do it. But in that first lesson we asked about baptism and he as well wants to work towards being baptized. He asked us if his new born could be baptized as well, so we read in Moroni 8 and explained why we don't baptize little children and then we explained about blessing the baby and he understood it completely and said that he would love to have the child blessed. Tomorrow we have a return appointment with Angel and Amparo, and we are expecting it to be a good one.

Sunday night, an English member of the branch called us and told us that they would like us to come by, teach, and prepare their son for baptism. He is ten and hasn't been baptized because they were working on getting him fully adopted. So tonight we are going to go by assess the situation and probably have his baptism very soon. He has been coming to church for a very long time and probably can teach us everything that he need to know for baptism.

There is a lot of improvement happening in the great area of the Nampa 32nd branch. Elder Padgett and I both are grateful to be serving here, and are excited to watch all of the great things that are happening work out.